About Me

My life was described by one of my editors as “impossibly exotic” – although really it was not my life, but me, that was the exotic, the uprooted plant, the one who didn’t belong, always living in someone else’s backyard...
Now I am back in Australia, the returning native learning to live where I was born. Writer, traveler, environmentalist. Author of The Isles of Glory trilogy (The Aware, Gilfeather, The Tainted); The Mirage Makers trilogy (Heart of the Mirage, Shadow of Tyr, Song of the Shiver Barrens); The Stormlord trilogy The Last Stormlord, Stormlord Rising, Stormlord's Exile, and writing as Glenda Noramly, a stand-alone book Havenstar. LATEST:
THE FORSAKEN LANDS
A clash of cultures and magic as traders and buccaneers hunt for spices and wealth in the Va-forsaken half of the world ... even as the unidentified darkness of plague and murder stalks their own land.
THE LASCAR'S DAGGER and THE DAGGER'S PATH available worldwide now! Final book, THE FALL OF THE DAGGER out mid-April.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Fasting children in Ramadan

There was a news item in a daily newspaper here last week, extolling the achievement of a local nine-year-old boy. He was apparently going to attempt to fast for the whole of Ramadan. Last year, aged 8, he achieved a so-called half-day fast.

[For those of you who may not be aware of what fasting is all about: briefly, it includes going without food and water from sun-up to sundown for a lunar month. The purpose is to turn one's thoughts to one's spiritual life, and to feel compassion for those who do not have the necessities of life.]

The boy's parents were proud, the newspaper reporter obviously thought this was an achievement of merit.

Sorry, I think it stinks. And I think his parents need a lesson in parenting, in childcare and in compassion. Are they really thinking of their child, or just enjoying boasting about him and getting his picture in the newspaper?

Islam says that fasting is for adults, not children. One assumes this is for obvious reasons: a growing child's body has certain needs - like water in a hot climate like ours. Send a kid to school, where he races around with his playmates without thinking that he has to last the whole day, and he could get severely dehydrated, putting a strain on immature kidneys. Doing this for day after day after day for a month, and you could be sowing the seeds of kidney disease in later life.

I would like to see religious leaders speak out against this kind of unholy abuse of children. I would like to see religious teachers in schools condemn to their students the whole idea of "half-day" fasts (which have no merit anyway) and not to condone any other attempt by children to emulate their adults in fasting month. I would like Muslim doctors to speak out and tell parents what the consequences can be.

Encouraging a child to fast is unIslamic, surely. I lived in an Arabic Muslim country for 2 years, and parents there were horrified at the idea of children fasting, and certainly would never have encouraged any childish attempts to do so.

1 comment:

I think it's fair enough for children to join in the spirit of fasting - e.g. just a small simple meal for lunch and only drink water through the day. That can teach them the idea of the religious tradition without the extremity of total self-deprivation (a no-no for small people, I do agree).

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BEST FANTASY NOVEL OF THE YEAR Shortlisted Finalist2003: for The Aware; 2004: for The Tainted; 2006: for Heart of the Mirage; 2007: for The Song of the Shiver Barrens; 2009: for The Last Stormlord 2010: for Stormlord Rising 2011: for Stormlord's Exile 2014: The Lascar's Dagger 2015: The Dagger's Path 2016: The Fall of the Dagger